


pull out the insides

by SpineAndSpite



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Anal Sex, Dubious Consent, M/M, Mind Control, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 20:03:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11169093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpineAndSpite/pseuds/SpineAndSpite
Summary: “Stop,” Damien says again, more insistent this time.“I’m not doing it on purpose.” Mark's heart pounds in his ears and he sees Damien’s hands shaking. God. They shouldn’t have started talking about sex. Shouldn’t have filled in the colors and shadows to this pencil outline of a sketch forming between them. They shouldn’t have given it a name.(Mark works through the ramifications of his ability returning, both moral and physical.)





	pull out the insides

**Author's Note:**

  * For [horchata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/horchata/gifts).



> The Damien/Mark situation is all sorts of Bad and i love it. 
> 
> Please MIND THE TAGS. this whole fic takes place while Damien is under Mark's control, i.e. he can't give consent. Hopefully it's got some nuance to it, but yea. Just so you don't go in blind.
> 
> title comes from "two weeks" by FKA Twigs, which i listened to on repeat while writing this

Mark had missed driving at night. Wind thrashing his hair, speed limit shattered until it feels like the car is lifting him up, bearing him along an inevitable slipstream. Never mind that eventually he would have to slow down for traffic or his exit or a speed trap. Until then he was weightless, fearless, anonymous. 

He’d missed other stuff more, of course. Coffee, movies, the ocean. His friends. Music. Sex. Driving is just on his mind right now. He’s been doing it for days. 

When Damien’s Creeper Van breaks down just outside of Omaha, Mark is tempted by a Porsche in a driveway, and then by a black Mercedes Benz outside a bank. But he doesn’t want to draw attention. _Damien_ doesn’t want to draw attention. He has no ID, no cell phone, no credit cards under his own name. Everything from his clothes, to his haircut, to the way he moves is angled to deflect attention, like a mirror tilted toward the sun. Nothing flashy, nothing ostentatious. Besides his personality. 

In the end, Mark chooses a grey Honda from a YMCA parking lot. He can’t bring himself to demand someone’s keys from them--it feels too much like assault--so he digs the keys out of a gym bag inside an unlocked locker, reasoning that they really should have taken the sign on the wall’s advice and secured their valuables. 

Damien watches him with unsubtle disgust. “If you’re going to hijack my powers, the least you could do is use them.” 

Mark wants him to shut up, so he does. Now he's sitting in the passenger seat in a loose, boneless sprawl, and has been for the last three hundred miles. His hands lie palms up on his thighs, drenched in a chiaroscuro criss-cross of the highway streetlights. His unwashed hair is pushed forward in a sweaty clump, hanging stringy around his ears. He looks drunk. He looks _wrecked_. Is this semiconscious lethargy a side-effect of having his powers taken, some interference effect? Or is there some part of Mark that _wants_ Damien like this? Quiet, compliant. Vulnerable. 

That thought sends an uneven thrill into the pit of his stomach, something angry and petty and gleeful drinking it in. 

Next to him, Damien shifts restlessly, head lolling, sweat gleaming in the hollow of his throat. Mark wonders if he should put on the AC. He isn't hot, but he's not sure about Damien. He certainly _looks_ feverish. His fingers twitch. They are long and bony, his wrists surprisingly delicate.

“Stop.” 

Mark jumps. “I didn’t know you were awake.” The radio fades in and out, splintering into static. “Stop what?” 

“Just--stop.” 

He could mean the radio, the car, the unending forward march of time, but Mark sees his pinched eyes and clenched jaw and knows that’s not it. When they look at each other, Mark feels an echo of that tension thrumming between them. He’d thought it was because of Damien’s power, his will prickling at his skin, clawing for a way inside, but it hasn’t gone away. He takes a shaky breath. 

“Stop,” Damien says again, more insistent this time. 

“I’m not doing it on purpose.” His heart pounds in his ears and he sees Damien’s hands shaking. God. They shouldn’t have started talking about sex. Shouldn’t have filled in the colors and shadows to this pencil outline of a sketch forming between them. They shouldn’t have given it a name. 

The thing is--he isn’t _into_ Damien. At least, not the same way he’s into Sam or had been into people before the AM. But Damien is so earnest in everything he dos, so _ridiculous_. He either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that half the time he sounds like a cartoon villain. There’s something refreshing in the sheer nerve of his hypocrisy. 

_I’m not like everyone else. The rules aren’t the same._

You can’t be in this sort of situation and not grow a certain...fascination. At least Mark can’t be. It’s been so long since he’s had anybody to get attached to at all. There’s Sam, of course, but she still feels like a dream, even if the distance between them is shrinking with every mile. When he finally reaches out to to touch her, part of him is still convinced she’ll slip through his fingers. 

And Damien is here and very real. And very, very eager to please. 

Next to him, Damien’s breaths go shallow. 

This is dangerous, Mark knows. Really dangerous. 

\--

Any doubts over whether they’re on the same page are dispelled when he checks them into their hotel and unlocks the door with the single keycard. 

“Romantic,” Damien snorts, and tosses his bag onto the bed. Mark has no idea what’s in it. He only seems to ever wear the one pair of jeans and jacket. 

“It’s a Hilton, not the Ritz,” Mark says, uncomfortable. He should just have checked them into the Days Inn across the street, but his skin threatened to get up and crawl away at the threat of another motel bed. This isn’t anything fancy, but at least the blankets won’t chafe. And it was just cheaper to get a room with one bed. 

Damien looks worn down to the bone, craters excavated beneath his eyes. Mark expects him to toss himself down and do his usual impression of a corpse, but he doesn’t. He walks up to Mark and presses him back against the door. Chilly fingers go underneath the hem of his sweater. 

“What are you doing?” Mark grunts. So stupid. It’s always so fucking stupid when people say that in movies when they already know the answer.

“Exactly what you want me to,” Damien growls. 

“This isn’t--.” 

“What you want? When will you get it through your thick head--you can’t fight this, Bryant! All you can do is stay away from me.” 

“I can’t do that,” Mark says. For Damien’s sake--Mark isn’t sure he can even feed himself at this point--and for his own. All he’s wanted for the past months is to escape back to Sam (in those rare moments when he’s been allowed to want anything at all) but when he thinks about being away from Damien, he is filled with the breathless panic of free fall. It’s Stockholm Syndrome, it’s inertia. But that doesn’t make it any less real. 

“I’m not leaving you alone,” Mark says.

Damien gets in his face, close enough for his stubble to scrape Mark’s chin. That’s what he is. Roughness. A charred, broken voice. A pretty mouth and hungry eyes. “Then whatever happens next isn’t my fault.” 

 

They shower. Separately. Damien laughs at Mark every time he avoids his gaze or tries not to touch him, because it’s worthless, isn’t it? Damien’s power--this wanting--isn’t like anything else. It’s slippery. It isn’t about willpower or focus. All you can hope for is distraction, compartmentalizing your desires out of existence. Damien has gone through a lifetime of this, of avoidance and careful tempering of his personality to make sure he doesn’t want too much. Because now that Mark is experiencing it for himself, it’s clear Damien could be so much worse than he is. 

They were always going to end up like this eventually, with Damien flat on his back and Mark on top of him, looking down at the spill of his damp hair across the bedspread. It’s uneven in the back. Maybe he cut it himself, or maybe it just grows that way. 

“You like this, don’t you?” he grunts. “You like having power over me.” 

“I’m not doing this on purpose,” Mark snaps back. Damien’s pupils are dilated. In the dark, the clock on the nightstand burns red. 

“That’s not what I asked, is it?” 

Mark doesn’t say anything. What is there to say? It doesn’t matter that he does not revel in it the way Damien does. Whether you love or hate reality, it’s still all you have.

Damien tugs him closer. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” he breathes. “Feeling my mind just cave in under yours?” 

His lips are wet. He keeps licking them. He smells like generic hotel soap and warm, clean skin. A human smell. Mark has gone so long without being able to touch and taste and feel, and he hasn’t just been craving coffee and fries and that crunchy kind of granola with the dried berries in it. He’s been craving _this_. Contact. Connection. That aching rush of desire mirrored back at him from someone else. 

Beneath him, Damien’s breaths go shallow and quick. His mind brushes against Mark’s like a skittish animal. It shies away at first, then arches against him, warm and lithe and friendly. They’re becoming a feedback loop. Mark wants Damien, which makes Damien want him, which just makes Mark want him more, his own excitement mounting as Damien’s pupils dilate and his cheeks flush. He’s getting hard against Mark’s thigh

Damien had to have known this was a possibility, right? He’d known what Mark’s ability could do, but he’d chosen to rescue him anyway. 

“I’m the only one who can give you what you want,” Damien gasps against his ear, and right now it feels true. Even though Damien is, by any standards, an awful kisser. He opens his mouth too wide and uses too much tongue, and he breathes in great shuddering gasps, like Mark is choking him. Mark grinds down against him without meaning to, and the tight, vulnerable sound Damien makes shoots straight to his dick. 

God, Mark knew he was fucked up, but he didn’t know he was this kind of fucked up. 

“You feel it, don’t you?” Damien says. “The power?” And there he goes again, talking like a masked comic book villain. So earnest, not a hint of irony, and the worst part is that Mark _does_ feel it. He feels the shape of Damien’s will giving under his own, and he can’t stop it. Worse--he doesn’t want to, and it’s terrifying. 

He fists his fingers in Damien’s hair and Damien makes another of those soft, overwhelmed noises. “Fuck, don’t do that,” Mark hisses, but that’s not actually what he wants, so Damien doesn’t listen. No wonder Damien has never had sex with anyone before. Mark can’t imagine trying to deal with this situation while also having your first time. 

He thinks that this could be really, really good. If they’d been other people. Not themselves. Not Mark the captive, Damien the self-professed sociopath. If he couldn’t feel Damien’s hatred cooking beneath his skin; for breaking him, for taking away the only thing in his world that makes sense. 

“Fuck, stop it,” Damien growls, when Mark kisses his neck, his throat, the rasping stubble beneath his chin. “You’re pulling me to pieces, make up your goddam mind.” His eyes open, blazing and enraged, and the whole room tilts as Mark finds himself flat on his back, wind knocked out of him even though they’re on a mattress. Damien takes two handfuls of his shirt and snarls down at him. “Do you want me to just lie there and take it or do you want me to be mean? I can’t do both.” 

Mark can’t answer this, because he doesn’t know what he wants. Who the hell does? Don’t people spend hundreds of dollars on therapy just to figure this out? There’s what he wants, and then there’s what he wants to want. He doesn’t want to want Damien, but he does. He doesn’t want to want to punish him, but he does. He wishes he could use Damien’s stolen ability on himself. 

That really would be the ultimate superpower, wouldn’t it? Complete mastery over oneself. To choose what you wanted to feel, to desire, to think. 

How has Damien managed to navigate this for years and still remained a relatively intact human being? He’s a dick, no doubt about it, and not what anyone would call a good person, but he’s certainly not as bad as he could be. He could be so much worse. He could be a genuine super villain. 

“I really don’t think you’re the monster that you pretend to be,” Mark says to Damien’s wide eyes and snarling mouth. His lips are pink and plush and very tempting. 

He growls, shakes Mark by the front of his shirt, a couple of seams going in the neck. “You have no idea what kind of monster I am.” 

Mark can’t help the hysterical little laugh. “God, do you hear yourself? You’re unbelievably cheesy. You’re a CW show.” 

“Yeah?” One of Damien’s eyes is twitching, his breaths exploding in the space between them. “What about you? ‘You’re not the monster you think you are’. This isn’t a episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” 

“You’ve seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer?” 

“I’m a shut-in,” Damien snaps. “Of course I’ve seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” He glares. “You’re as cheesy as I am.” 

“That’s a heinous lie.” Mark pushes a damp, gently frizzing curl back behind Damien’s ear. It’s such a natural gesture, so innocuous, but its intimacy startles both of them. This is becoming dangerously close to pillow talk. Mark has literally no template for how this should go. 

Damien rolls his hips against his thigh; he is quickly losing patience with Mark’s internal struggle. “You mind-fucked me, okay? You won. You’ve got all the power and I’ve got none. The only thing that could make that worse is if you don’t _use it_.” It’s just like what he’d said when Mark had sheepishly stolen the keys to the Honda, needing a vehicle but unwilling to commit to the full identity of _psychic car thief_ , mind-controlling millionaires out of their luxury automobiles. 

Now that he thinks about it, it would probably have been better if he’d stolen the Porsche. Its owner could just buy another one. The Honda probably belonged to a soccer mom, or some student who now has to take the bus. Guilt fizzles low in his stomach. 

Damien says, “Don’t force me to want something and then refuse to give it to me.” His voice thrums through Mark; he feels it everywhere they touch. 

“I--.” Swallowing is suddenly difficult. Damien’s face is shored up by shadows. Every so often lights will march along the wall as a car passes. “I just--I don’t want your first time to be an assault. Nobody deserves that, Damien. Not even--.” 

“Not even me.” A very ugly laugh. 

“I was going to say “not even my worst enemy”, but sure.” 

Damien rolls off him and sort of hunches up toward the pillows. Mark’s grateful; his foot has gone all tingly. “I don’t give a shit about that. What does virginity even mean for guys, anyway?” He snorts and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. 

Mark shrugs. “I guess.” It had just been a badge of shame when he was growing up, one that he’d shrugged off pretty fast. 

“What about you, how--.” Another swipe of his hand across his mouth. “How did you lose--?” 

“My virginity?” Mark rubs fingers over his face, bemused. This is such a weird and also such a normal conversation to be having. Talking with Damien brings two worlds that are never supposed to touch smashing together in an awkward life sandwich. Sex and psychic powers. Typical and atypical. “Uh...with a dude in my chem class, I guess. We got drunk in his dad’s basement and he gave me a blowjob?” 

Damien is flushed all the way down to his neck. It’s disarmingly cute. “Why are you saying it like you’re asking me, I don’t fucking know.” 

“No, it’s just--.” Mark scratches his fingers through his hair. It’s still a little damp from the shower, sliding tacky over his palm. “Everything’s kind of a jumble. I was just starting to realize I was different from other people then--I mean the power thing, not the bisexual thing, I’ve known that since I was old enough to know what it was.” Mark’s interest in dudes sort of got superseded by his tendency to pick up any psychic ability around him like a short-wave radio. “There were a lot of people, and I’m not sure which came in what order.” 

“So what you’re saying is, you’re such a slut you don’t know who you lost your virginity to?” 

Mark flushes, simultaneously abashed and pleased. “Yeah, okay. And who’s the grown man who’s never had sex with anyone? Like that’s normal.” 

“Yeah?” Damien growls. “I told you. I’m not normal. The rules are--.” 

“Different for you, yeah.” Damien’s t-shirt is warm from his body heat. Against Mark’s fingers it feels like a living thing. “I’m getting that.” 

 

Damien lets Mark undress him, though he's careful to gently place his jacket on the ground. He’s really attached to it, even though he could walk into any store in the world and walk out with every jacket they have. He’s skinny underneath it, and kind of...wasted. Like he’s been ill. Mark doesn’t have much room to talk though, since he’s spent the last few years eating through a tube. He isn’t emaciated or anything, but his physique has taken a beating. 

Damien’s hands shake as he tosses the rest of his clothes onto the floor. Is he cold? Scared? Both? 

He goes for Mark again right away, and Mark can’t help hoping it’s because he wants to get his hands on him as fast as possible, and not because he’s being compelled to. Mark can’t imagine there’s any part of himself that _wanted_ a bony elbow to the gut and a mouthful of frizzy curls. 

They fall back in a messy sprawl, Damien grinding against him, kisses hungry and artless. He’s making those soft, breathy sounds again, like everything that’s happening is almost too much for him. They make Mark so hot he wants to die, and not even the very real possibility that Damien’s doing it because Mark likes it so much is enough to extinguish that heat. 

Mark wonders what kind of sounds he’ll make when he fucks him. 

He kisses Damien’s neck, tastes the warm pulse in his throat, bites down harder than he probably should. He’s been with virgins before, he knows how to test limits kindly and gently, but he doesn’t want that with Damien, and Damien would probably kick his ass if he tried it. 

“Hey, um--.” Damien makes an impatient noise when Mark pulls away from marking his neck to talk. “If you want you can...you know. Be on top.” 

In the dark Damien’s eyes are lightless dots. Even in sunlight they’re almost black. Mark has never seen eyes like Damien’s. “That’s not what you want,” he says. 

Mark doesn’t argue. There’s no point. 

They don’t have lube, so they use the hotel body lotion, which is less than ideal. They don’t have condoms either, so they go without, which is even worse. But if there’s any part of this situation that isn’t ill-advised, Mark definitely can’t find it. 

Damien chokes on curses as Mark opens him up on his fingers, calls Mark a million different unflattering names, then lets out a long, shattered moan when Mark presses deep. His thighs twitch and he grabs at the sheets. Jesus, it’s...it’s fucking hot. The hindbrain, the instinctual, animal parts of Mark don’t care how this happened, what a goddamn bad scene this is. They just watch a lithe, wiry boy with a pretty dick fucking himself on his fingers, and they’re like, “Nice.” 

“Oh my god.” Damien’s fingers slide across Mark’s sweaty back when he pushes into him, his mouth dropping open, eyes squeezing shut. He’s so honest in all of his reactions, the breaths coming out of him in sharp little gasps, and who knows if it’s because this is how he really is in bed or because it’s what Mark likes in bed, but he does like it, fucking loves it, how hot Damien is inside, how he shivers like he’s absolutely overwhelmed, the mouthed, “God, please,” against Mark’s neck. 

Mark thrusts and Damien chokes. He’s biting his lips. He’s going to make himself bleed. “Jesus fucking--Bryant, I’m--this--this fucking _hurts_.” 

“It’s okay.” Mark kisses his temple, his forehead, the cleft of his chin. “Relax.” He pushes Damien’s sweaty hair back from where it keeps flopping into his eyes. 

“You fucking relax,” Damien snaps, but his muscles shudder and loosen, until the hot clutch of him goes from utterly vice-like to just tight as all hell. 

“Do you want to stop?” 

Damien curls his fingers in the soft hair at the back of Mark’s neck. He yanks. “It doesn’t matter what I want,” It’s in the same thrumming growl as everything else he says, but this time Mark is watching his eyes, the subtle twitches in the soft muscles of his face. There’s anger, there’s fear, but there’s also relief. Release. 

“No,” Mark whispers in his ear. “It doesn’t. Not right now.” 

Damien sucks in a breath. He struggles for a moment, eyes so wide they show white around the pupils. Mark presses him back down to the mattress and pins his hands. He doesn’t ask him if it’s alright. He already knows that the answer doesn’t matter. He just fucks him until his voice breaks on a shivering cry, until Mark’s sure they’re going to get noise complaints. 

He pulls out before he comes, spilling onto Damien’s chest in thin white stripes. It feels good, and so does wrapping a hand around Damien and finishing him off, giving him long, slick strokes and watching as he goes rigid, tossing his head back against the pillow. 

Afterward, when Damien has rinsed off and Mark has ordered them room service, they lie in bed, close but not touching. Damien is watching him like he’s a wild animal that might bolt at any second, or attack. 

“I have a theory,” Mark says. 

Damien had come out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist, a silly gesture of modesty. Mark had tugged it off him as soon as he got within reach. Now he reaches out and traces his fingers across the dip between two ribs, liking the little twitch and shiver of his skin. 

“A theory?” Damian grunts. “Let’s hear it.” 

“I don’t know if this is actually something I did to you,” Mark says slowly. “I think you may have done it to yourself.” Damien’s brows jam together and he goes tense all over. Mark strokes a thumb across his hip, tracing the line of the bone. “Chill. Hear me out.” 

“You think I wanted you to take my power away? You think I wanted to be a mindless puppet? Helpless?” 

“I think you wanted to know what it’s like,” Mark says. “I think you just wanted to let yourself go for once in your life. Maybe subconsciously,” he adds, an olive-branch. 

Slowly, Damien’s muscles unknot, a section at a time--his shoulders, his legs, the smooth lines of his stomach. His eyelashes are sooty-dark against his cheeks. “I’m just tired,” he says. 

“Tired of what?” Mark asks, although he thinks he already knows the answer. There had been so many times at the AM--and before that, if he’s honest--when the only thing he’d wanted was just to go to sleep and never wake up. Never return to a reality that isn’t worth being awake for. 

Damien doesn’t answer, because he’s fallen asleep, chest rising and falling. Peaceful. At least, the illusion of peace. It’s fine. They’ll have plenty of time to talk tomorrow. They’ve still got a long way to go. 

Mark cleans himself up and pulls on a pair of pants to wait for the food. He doesn’t know what to think about what just happened, beyond the fact that he’ll need to pick up some lube to do it right next time. If there is a next time. 

What’s he thinking? Of course they’ll be a next time. He wants it, so Damien will want it too. 

A slow chasm of horror opens up inside him upon realizing how easy that thought is, how natural. It would be so simple to let this ability take over him.

Mark sits on the edge of the bed, watching the shadows on the wall. They’ll figure this thing out. They have to.

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up at spine-and-spite on the tumbles


End file.
